Nine O'clock on the 62nd Floor
by Konstantya
Summary: It was pure coincidence that he happened to come across her that day. It had to be. Because he wasn’t the one with demons haunting him, was he? ...Wasn’t he?


General note: I'm only going to reformat my fics so much when this site is the one at fault. So if the formatting is weird, please check out my profile for more info. Thank you.

Obligatory CYA: I don't own Final Fantasy VII.

I'm thinking this takes place a little bit before the game starts. Somewhere within a year before it, maybe. Enjoy!

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**Nine o'Clock On the 62nd Floor  
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_Turning back ten thousand years  
It's all a blur, where the taxis go  
Monster man, a willing friend  
Lucy serves the melon cold  
Oh…violent and delicious souls…_

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It was pure coincidence that he happened to come across her that day.

It had to be. The chances of such a thing happening were astronomical, he knew, but while improbable, were not impossible, he kept telling himself. Besides, he had always prided himself for not believing in such silly, superstitious things like fate and karma.

Improbable. But not impossible.

It was the rare case where he was in need of another one liter round bottom flask, and any other time he would have gone down to the storage rooms. But it was late, and he hadn't been sleeping well the past few nights, and it was one of the rare times where he simply wanted to get his work over and done with. The older labs, used for the less exclusive experiments, were far closer. And as relatively late as it was, the science floors were virtually deserted, save for the odd hallway janitor, so there wouldn't be the annoyance of interns or even other people in general.

He was reaching for the appropriate keycard when the elevator opened, and he let his feet do the walking, carrying him along the rarely visited, but still incredibly familiar, hallway to the appropriate room. A flick of the light switch, a cursory glance over the room to inspect the state it had been left in, a reach up to the appropriate shelf (noting with some disgust that he would have to give the flask a good cleaning), and he was done. Back to the door, a flick of the switch to make the room dark again, and out. He had taken two steps in the direction of the elevator when he suddenly halted at something he hadn't noticed before.

Nine o'clock at night and the lights of one of the 62nd floor labs were on. The door was open. And janitors were not authorized to enter such rooms.

For a moment, he entertained the irritating notion that it might have been that redheaded Turk again, as they had clearance to most of the building, including these labs. He was hardly what one would call educated when it came to chemicals, but he had enough rudimentary knowledge to manage a few juvenile pranks. And he had the authority backed by the fear his career provided that allowed him to get away with such things. Like the time he had sprinkled copper dust into some of the disposable gloves, so that when the wearers took them off, their skin was a dull shade of green. And then he had put hydrogen peroxide in the soap, so that when they had gone to wash it off, it simply oxidized more.

For what certainly was not the first time, he wondered how it was the unkempt redhead managed to keep his job as a higher-up in the company.

Fully intent on giving the occupier of the lab a full dressing-down, no matter if it was a Turk or not, he walked in, setting the flask on one of the counters. There was no one in sight, but the lights in the next room over were also lit, and he could hear a little bit of noise. An abrasive scratching, the squirt of a liquid, a little metallic _clunk_.

With an annoyed sound, he made his way across the room to the opposite doorway, catching a glimpse of her from behind.

Brunette hair pulled back in a long ponytail. A white lab coat over a slim frame. A professional knee-length skirt. Legs covered in nylons, meeting a pair of simple dress shoes that made her an inch, perhaps an inch and a half taller.

He blinked a few times in shock, shaking his head in apprehension as his heart rate suddenly increased, sending ice cold water through his veins instead of blood. He quickly removed his glasses, wiping the lenses with a patch of mostly clean fabric from the bottom inside of his lab coat. He replaced them over his eyes, forehead crinkled as he pushed them up the bridge of his nose. Relief overcame him as his eyes focused again.

Yes, a long brunette ponytail, but dark denim pants that were too long and starting to fray at the bottoms. A short-sleeved white shirt. A navy blue, long-sleeved something tied around her waist. Unprofessional.

_She_ had _never_ been unprofessional when working.

He cleared his throat irritably, entering the room more. "What are you doing in here?" he snapped.

She must have heard him come in, because she didn't jump at the sudden sound of his voice, just turned her head to look at him and blinked. Her face wasn't quite as oval. The hazel of her eyes more brown than green. "Using thirty percent acetone for dissolving purposes, last time I checked." Her voice was a bit lower, closer to an alto. Her lips maybe slightly smaller. Her hair a shade or two sandier.

The resemblance was startling. Uncannily similar, but not exact.

Improbable. But not impossible.

"This is a restricted area," he curtly informed her.

"Uh…yes," she agreed mildly. "I'm quite aware of that."

"Then why are you in here?"

"Because I'm not one of the ones restricted from it, and it's part of my job. Which you happen to be distracting me from."

"Excuse me, young lady, but this is _my_ department, and I want you out of it."

"I've been coming in here periodically for weeks," she stated in defense. "No one's ever bothered me about it before."

"Weeks?" he repeated skeptically, giving her a look of disdain. "I've never seen you before."

_—Liar— _

No. No, he insisted to himself. He _hadn't_ seen her before. He would have noticed if he had…

_"Your_ lack of attentiveness is hardly _my_ problem. Excuse me." And with that, she went back to what she was doing.

He simply glared at her, perhaps more angry with himself than her. "Your supervisor's going to get an ear full. I refuse to tolerate such blatant disrespect."

"Fine," she remarked dryly. "Have fun taking it up with the head of Weapons Research and Development."

"Scarlet? You're working directly under _that_ woman?"

She sighed, lifting up the heavy steel tube she was cleaning, peering at the inside. "Unfortunately, yes."

He sighed irritably. He would rather put up with _Reno_ than Scarlet. And that was saying a lot. "Well how long do you intend to be in here?" he demanded.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. "Well, I _intended_ to be out of here almost fifteen minutes ago, and _would_ have, had I not run out," she explained, presenting the bottle of acetone and giving it a little shake, "and had to mix more of the concentration I needed." She squirted some more on the inside, using a test tube brush as an abrasive, scrubbing a few times, inspecting it, scrubbing again, squirting more acetone inside, and repeating the process as need be, cleaning what seemed to be old, caked-on grease from the inside.

Well, at least she had the sense to wear gloves. Vinyl gloves over hands that were well manicured and taken well-care of to try to negate the effects of lab work on her skin.

He blinked and shook his head a little to clear his vision again, pushing his glasses up on his nose. A habit his nerves had taught him over the decades.

Her nails were uneven and short, her skin callused and dirty with chemicals and the residues of metals, the backs of her hands chapped. He looked away, then back, pleased to note that they stayed the same, still dirty and bare.

"You should be wearing gloves," he informed her, his tone forcefully condescending, as if the acidity of his voice could dissolve the image of clean, elegant hands from his mind.

"Probably," she agreed. But instead of heeding advice, she continued what she was doing. After a moment more, she held the steel up to the light to inspect it, peering through it for any more of the offending substance. Pleased to find none, she placed the bottle of acetone off to the side, where she had found it, and gave the metal a final rinsing under the faucet. A toweling off, and she brought it over to one of the counters where a large metal toolbox sat.

Her gait was the same. Straight and confident. She wore what looked like boots, maybe ankle high, maybe a bit higher, but the sort conducive to industrial work. Casual, with a heavy sole that made a muffled, dull noise against the tile.

He had been working too hard, and his mind must have been playing tricks on him. Why else would he have expected boots like that to make the _click-clacks_ of a heeled dress shoe?

The sound of compressed air blowing from a station fixture pulled him back into reality. She was holding the foot and a half or so of metal up to the air stream, drying out the inside so rust couldn't set in.

She hardly seemed bothered by his lingering presence, but hardly seemed very willing to acknowledge it, either. Indeed, she hardly seemed to take note of him at all, as if she simply couldn't be bothered.

After a moment, the task of drying was accomplished, and she shut the air off and opened the latch on the toolbox, flipping the lid back. With a bit of exertion, she lifted the top rack, set it off to the side, and retrieved a dirty rag and a small white bottle from the bottom compartment. She set about rubbing a thin layer of oil over the freshly cleaned steel, working her way into the inside with the cloth wrapped around a thin rod.

He wasn't watching what she was doing. Ever since the toolbox had opened and she had absently removed the top rack, his eyes had been fixed on it.

An old, tarnished, rather rusted handgun carelessly rested on top of the numerous screwdrivers and pliers and files. Out of place. A temporary resident.

He had never claimed to be an expert on guns, but there _had_ been once specific instance in which he had used one. It wasn't a time he often let himself think about. Too many skeletons in that particular closet. But he recalled that it had been heavier than he expected, and the recoil had carried so much force that he had almost lost his balance after pulling the trigger. And despite the years that had passed since then and a memory rusty with age, hazily remembering the chaotic blur it had all been…

He would have bet his current project funding that the gun in her toolbox was the exact same model.

He eyed the weapon warily and swallowed. "Is that related to your job as well?"

She looked up, tracing his line of sight to the weapon. "Hmm? Oh, no, just a little something I picked up to restore. Side project, if you will."

His mouth dipped into a frown, closer to a sneering grimace, his throat making a slight _hmph_ noise. "Hardly seems worth it."

"Oh, it's a wonderful gun," she said lightly, in defense. "Top quality .45-caliber revolver. I'd say about twenty-five to thirty years old, off the top of my head. Kicks like a mule and'll rip a nasty hole into someone," she said casually, matter-of-factly, pouring another little dollop of oil on the rag.

He pushed his glasses up again, noticing that he had begun to perspire slightly. "Really." It was more of an absent statement than a question.

"At a close enough distance," she elaborated, "you can easily take someone down with one shot. Doesn't really matter if you hit a vital organ or not. You can shoot someone at just about any place on the torso and chances are, they won't be getting back up anytime soon." The woman couldn't have been more blithe, but the conversation was becoming increasingly difficult for him. She obviously knew more about the weapon, and he was under the distinct impression that she could probably fire it with far more skill than he.

Was the gun loaded? Hell if he knew. Could it even fire in the condition it was in? He wanted to think it couldn't, but looks could be terribly deceiving…

He quickly glanced at her again. Navy blue and white. The colors of…

Coincidence, he thought, jerking his eyes away. Mere coincidence.

She snapped the cap of the bottle closed and deftly tossed it and the cloth into the toolbox. The piece of steel followed, with her working to wedge it into the bottom so that she could replace the top shelf and close it altogether.

He watched her carefully as she went to go wash her hands. "You're finished?" he asked testily.

"I'm finished."

"Finally," he muttered under his breath.

She picked up the toolbox, carrying the weight with both hands as she proceeded to leave the lab, letting him turn off the lights as he followed. One-liter round bottom flask in hand, he flicked the doorstop up from the floor with the toe of his shoe and let the door shut, locking automatically.

She was waiting in front of the elevator, ID card already in and out of the slot. She gave him a cursory glance as he came to stand a few feet off to the side. "Down?" she asked.

He made a noise, something like a disapproving grunt. "Up."

"Ah. Late night," she commented.

He made no response as the numbers at the top of the wall lit up, one by one, but instead looked over at her out of the corner of his eye. She stood silently, holding onto the toolbox in front of her with both hands around the handle, the exact same way _she_ would hold her briefcase. One hand lifted to sweep back the stray pieces that had escaped her ponytail. Another fevered blink of a lab coat, and a tremble ran over his thin, hunched shoulders. Like ice sliding over a coffin.

She caught the movement, flicking her head over to look at him. Her eyebrow quirked up in an unnervingly familiar way. "Something wrong?"

He frowned, almost sneered, and shook his head, concentrating on the steel door in front of him. "Just a sudden chill," he muttered.

She shrugged slightly and let her eyes wander around, up towards the ceiling as the elevator _dinged_ and the door slid open. "This is an older part of the building. Maybe it's a ghost passing through."

Before he could manage to tell from her unreadable tone whether she had been sincere in her suggestion or not, the elevator door was already closing with another ring of the electronic tone. He thought he might have caught the slightest hint of amusement around her mouth as she lifted one hand from her toolbox, palm facing outward, twitching her fingers in the slightest mockery of a wave goodbye before the door shut.

A moment too late his hand shoved his ID card into the slot. The lighted numbers above the door continued to descend.

Despite how his feet often carried him back to the 62nd floor after that, searching while he insisted to himself that he was doing nothing of the sort, he never saw her again. And, being who he was, he never deigned to ask if anyone had seen a woman matching her description. He easily could have checked the surveillance cameras, but there was a nagging prick of anxiety at the thought, as if he was afraid of what he would or wouldn't find.

The way luck would have it, when he finally found her employment file, it was not even a week after she had left the company.

A freelancer. Contracted to work an intense, short stint of only three months. Specializing in gun repair and fabrication.

Lucille Erinneys. Age twenty-seven. Commonly called "Lu."

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_This is not a conclusion, no revolution  
Just a little confusion  
On where your head has been…_

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A/N: Not sure where the concept came from, exactly. Probably some offshoot of Vincent talking to Lucrecia at the waterfall cave during the game (I'm of the opinion she was a ghost, but that's just me). Or maybe I just felt like screwing with Hojo's mind.

The last name of "Erinneys" is a variation on the Erinyes (or Furies) of mythology, by the way. And the italic quotes at the beginning and end are from the Tori Amos song, "Ode to the Banana King," which I don't own either.

Needless to say, this fic is open to a lot of interpretations. To be honest, _I'm_ not entirely sure what I intended anymore. Lucille started off as a real person, but I don't know if that's true anymore. So if you have a theory, I'd love to hear it! It would be great to know how others read this.


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